Buddhist India

by T.W. Rhys Davids

This book speaks about Buddhism, its inception and development.  It deals mainly with how and under whose reign Buddhism became popular in towns and villages.  Social grades have also been discussed in detail.  An attempt to reconstruct a picture of the economic conditions of that time has also been made.  The writings of the Buddha's  conversational discourses on the Silas, the development of the writing such as writing on copper plates, etc. were also given emphasis.  Language and Literature, like Pali books, Nikayas, the Jataka book, Vinaya have also been discussed.  The Religion and the position of the brahmins were also find proper place in the book.  And, Buddhism under Chandragupta, Asoka and Kanishka give proper place in the book.  Instead of principles of Buddhism, velopment of its with different circumstances and fulfil the purpose very well.

Genres: Buddhism

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Thomas William Rhys Davids was a British scholar of the Pāli language, founder of the Pali Text Society, and Chair of Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester. He took an active part in founding the British Academy and London School for Oriental Studies.

Reviews

[Totochelamouche · Rating 4 out of 5]

They held it degradation, to which only dire misfortune would drive them, to work for hire.

We are told of lofty walls, and strong ramparts with buttresses and watch-towers and great gates ; the whole surrounded by a moat or even a double moat, one of water and one of mud.

Deceased persons of distinction, either by birth or wealth or official position, or as public teachers, were cremated ; and the ashes were buried under a so-called tope (in Pali thupa, in Buddhist Sanskrit stupa).

The following remarks will be chiefly based on Mrs. Rhys-Davids's articles on this important subject in the Economic Journal, for 1901, and in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, for 1901.

It is evident from such passages - and many others might be quoted to a like effect - that the idea of recording, by writing, even a Suttanta, the average length of which is only about twenty pages of the size of this work, did not occur to the men who composed or used the canonical texts. They could not even have thought of the possibility of using writing as a means of guarding against such painful accidents. Yet, as we have seen, the Indian peoples had been acquainted with letters, and with writing, for a long time, probably for centuries before ; and had made very general use of writing for short communications. It seems extraordinary that they should have abstained from its use on occasions which were, to them, so important. Now the reason why they did so abstain is twofold.

Pali is to Sanskrit about as Italian is to Latin.

The next stage we have (that is, at present ; no doubt as soon as archaeological explorations are carried on systematically in India intermediate stages will be available) are the Asoka inscriptions. Of these thirty-four have so far been found, and M. Senart, in his Inscriptions de Piyadasi, has subjected all those discovered before 1886 to an exhaustive and detailed analysis. With these ought to be compared the greater number of the inscriptions on the Bharhut Tope, some of which are a little older, some a little younger, and only one or two a good deal younger than Asoka.

Englishmen probably pronounced would and could much as they do now. But some one knew there had been an l in the earlier form of would (as in the German wollte). And so he spelt it with an l, which no longer existed in the real, living speech. Somebody else (who thought he would be quite learned, and proper, and on the safe side), spelt could also with an l, though the l existed, in this case, neither in the older form of the word nor in the living speech. And now we are saddled with the l in both words whether we like it or not.

The Wanderers, some of whom were women, were not ascetics, except so far as they were celibates. The practices of self-mortification are always referred to as carried out by the Hermits in the woods.

As the word Nikaya also means a school, or sect, it is somewhat ambiguous, and was gradually replaced by the word Agama, continually used in the later Sanskrit literature. The same remark holds good of the technical term Suttanta. That also was gradually replaced by the shorter and easier phrase Sutta.

The Ten Perfections (Paramita) are qualities a Buddha is supposed to be obliged to have acquired in the countless series of his previous rebirths as a Bodhisatva. But this is a later notion, not found in the Nikayas. It gradually grew up as the Bodhisatva idea began to appeal more to the Indian mind.

"The question put by Upatissa" (more commonly known as Sariputta).

This comes out clearly in the legend of the Great King of Glory - The Maha-sudassana. In its later Jataka form it lays stress on the impermanence of all earthly things, on the old lesson of the vanity of the world. In its older form, as a Suttanta, it lays stress also on the Ecstasies (the Jhanas), which are perhaps pre-Buddhistic, and on the Sublime Conditions (the Brahma-Viharas), which are certainly distinctively Buddhistic (though a similar idea occurs in the later Yoga Sutra, [...]).

It may be noticed in passing that we have representations, of a very early date, of this Siri, the goddess of Luck, of plenty and success, who is not mentioned in the Veda.

Then, by a natural anthropomorphism, the gods too, in later works, were supposed - just as they had been supposed to offer sacrifice - to practise tapas, austerity. And it was not a mere distinction without a difference, it was a real advance in thought, when this sort of physical self-mastery, of the conquest of will over discomfort and pain, came to be place above sacrifice.

This professor of self-torture enumerates twenty-two methods of self-mortification in respect of food, and thirteen in respect of clothing, and among these the ascetic may make his choice. And he keeps his body under in other ways :

"He is a ' plucker-out-of-hair-and-beard ' (destroying by a painful process the possibility of pride in mere beauty of appearance) [...]"

In the monarchies the royal family, in the clans the community, put up (as we have seen above) public halls where such Wanderers (Paribbajaka) could lodge, and where conversational discussions, open to everyone, were held on philosophic and religious questions. The career of such a wandering teacher seems to have been open to anyone, and even to women. And the most perfect freedom, both of thought and of expression, was permitted to them - a freedom probably unequalled in the history of the world.

Then in the eight Rock Edict he declares that in the thirteenth year after his coronation he had set out for the Sambodhi - that is to say, he had set out, along the Aryan Eightfold Path, towards the attainment (if not in his present life then in some future birth as a man) of the state of mind called Arahatship.

Of those now known two are merely commemorative proclamations recording visits paid by Asoka - one to the stupa erected over the funeral urn of Konagamana the Buddha, and one to the birthplace of Gotama the Buddha.

The decorations on either side of the lower bas-relief are peacocks, symbolical of Asoka's family, the Moriyas (the Peacocks); and lions, symbolical of Ceylon, or of the royal family of Ceylon (that is, of Simhala, the Lion island).

[Zachary Krug · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of it is probably outdated, but still worth reading as a good introduction to buddhist india written in a lively style

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

so back then Davids was also a struggling academic, not enough money to make a living, had to write in scrap times, ... so knowledge production needs money needs support

[Pankaj Gautam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book speaks about Buddhism, its inception and development.